Passive preamp

How does the Freya sound when using in different modes? Passive, buffered , tubes. I use mine in a second system 90+% of the time in passive mode. I actually went as far as selling a Freya+ a while back as a substitute was found and said to be superior. Used the superior unit for a couple of months, then bought another Freya+. Sold the superior unit as it was inferior to the Freya+. The Freya+ is tough to beat unless one spends sizable piles of cash. Your mileage may vary. 

One of the finest passive preamps that I've found is Khozmo Acoustics. The shunt-zfoil volume control is superb. Only limitation is 3 inputs only (which is one more than I use, so not a limitation in my case).

Very reasonably priced as well!

Ive owned quite a lot of kit over the decades. I really loved the Khozmo dual mono preamp. Sadly, I had to sell it to fund another purchase

I run systems with both active and passive preamps. What works best depends on synergy with the amp, as other posters have emphasized. Categorical statements about which is better don’t really apply. If your amp is friendly enough to passives (and as others have pointed out, a search of these pages would educate you on how to determine this), then you have choices of topology. The three main ones are resistor, transformer, and autoformer. I’ve played with excellent examples of all three and the autoformer-based passive from Bent Audio is my personal favorite. YMMV. The only way to know is dig in, research, and experiment. Bent is no longer in business, btw, but used ones do come up.

When I hear passive preamp, I’m thinking of a unit that does not amplify the signal halves, but the quality of components, power supply type as in diodes or tube based rectification, in addition to capacitors, etc will leave its fingerprint on music. I have an Esoteric C-03X preamp that is able to add +6, +12 or +18 dB on the output side. If I choose the 0 dB setting, this is somewhat like a passive preamp as the signal halves do not pass through any amplification/processing. Next, the signal is influenced by the power supply quality as in transformer size, quality and selection of caps and resistors will influence the sound as it passes through the preamp so it is not just an attenuation nob with resistors linked to it. At the 0 dB setting, music seems less embellished, well at least not processed by an op amp or something similar; the music has an open and airy sound. When I choose +12 dB or the higher setting, bass extension and the transient snap is better, plus bass is deeper and denser; overall, the music seems to be faster, which I’m guessing the bit of processing increases decay. This would make sense as Esoteric’s output board has a brace of capacitors to give music that transient "snap." I choose the Goldilocks setting, meaning the middle setting. Although, Ottmar Liebert on the passive 0 dB gain setting is pretty amazing...